


The Kaiser's Battle

by ChangedMan02



Category: Original Work
Genre: England (Country), France (Country), Germany, Minor Character Death, Trench Era, Trench Warfare, War, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:35:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24466540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChangedMan02/pseuds/ChangedMan02
Summary: A work set during The Great War's final summer. Will switch perspectives from different units and countries in every chapter.
Kudos: 3





	The Kaiser's Battle

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are much appreciated. Feel free to read my other works too.

“Edwards… Edwards!” – a voice whispered as two big hands shook my entire torso. – “Wake up, for God’s sake.”

My eyes shot wide open, startled by the sudden movement. I cursed at Private Barlas for the rude awakening, pushing him aside as my vision adjusted to the darkness.

“You damn Scott! I’ve told you a million times not to wake me up like that.” – I huffed frustrated. – “For a second I thought you were one of Jerry.”

Private Barlas snickered maliciously as he sat on his bed, lighting up his pipe. 

“if I was one of Jerry’s, I’d already slit ya’ throat, Edwards.” – He replied with the same sarcasm as always. I could not help but chuckle a bit, glad that the morning started rather normally, without any enemy bombardment or intruding raid parties. 

I was awoken at 0355 hours to mount guard in the sap. I took no more than a minute to fully strap on my webbing and helmet, slinging the rifle over my shoulder as I left the dugout. The air was nice and cool. The front itself was quiet for how hectic it would sometimes be. I could hear sporadic gunfire here and there, and bright searchlights cutting through the night sky in the search of enemy aircraft and scout blimps. All and all, it was all quiet in my sector of the Somme. The serenity of the night sent a chill down my spine.

The communication trench was empty, apart from a lone rat that dashed across my feet through the chalky ground and the men guarding sentry on both ends of the trench. Once on the other side, I took a right turn and walked past more weary sentry men on my way to the sap entrance. As customary, the man I relieve waits for me next to the entrance.

“Anything out of the ordinary?” – I asked.

“Not during my shift.” – He answered rather coldly. One could tell, even in the darkness, that he was quite exhausted. 

We said no more, and I walked in into the tight slit in the chalky ground. Traversing the narrow trench was uncomfortable. The walkway was uneven, and both the height and spacing of its walls were irregular, making it an even harder task to get to and back from the observation post without exposing your head, and in some places, your torso. Good thing I manned this position during the dark hours before dawn, and my only real threats were spotting flares and raiding parties, not to mention any sudden barrage. 

When I reached the end of the sap, I was already about thirty meters into No Man’s Land, far beyond the safety of our wire. I kneeled and fixed my bayonet, aiming my rifle just slightly over the parapet.

And then I waited, growing evermore anxious with each passing second. Command had intel that suggested that a new enemy offensive was imminent, and the whole front was eerily silent. I could not hear anything, nor could I see. 

Then it started. As far as they eye could see, sudden flashes of light momentarily illuminated the horizon, followed by yellow streaks that flew across the black sky above. I tracked the incoming shells, stunned by the sheer amount that soared towards our trenches. It was like a curtain of fire, and it was unveiling right on top of us.

Then I heard it. That horrific whistle as the projectiles was just seconds away from impact. I immediately feared for my life, letting go of my rifle and ducking for cover. The ground shook intensely as the first shells exploded around me. The air got hotter and hotter as more and more landed and exploded. I grit my teeth as shell after shell pounced my position. I do not know for how much time I laid prone in the sap; it felt like an eternity. Chalk and dirt fell on top of me, and I started to fear that I was living my last moments, for I was going to be buried alive. 

When I felt that the intensity of the shelling diminished, I began to run back towards my trenches, and not when I was a couple meters into my sprint, a shell landed on the end of the sap, obliterating it completely. The force of the explosion pushed me violently, the chin strap of my helmet breaking off as I hit the wall to my left as I tumbled onto the ground. For a second, I thought that was it. I thought I broke my neck with that hard landing.

It took me a few seconds to analyze what just happened. My ears were ringing, and the world shook so that I could not get a hold of my senses. I covered my ears in a desperate attempt to deafen the cacophony around me, and I felt a wet and warm sensation spread among my hands. I tried to look at them, but there was so much smoke and dust that I could not see what was directly in front of me. 

Still dazed by the explosion that rocked me, I clumsily stood up and continued my way back to friendly lines. By now, the barrage had crept forwards, hot copper imploding the frontline trenches. I hugged the walls as I slowly walked, following the bursts of fire of exploding shells. 

I made the grave mistake of blindly navigating the sap. Smoke made it impossible to see anything in front of me. My heart shot up to my throat when I took a step expecting solid ground, but instead sensing nothing, and tumbled into a crater a couple meters deep. Upon landing, I felt a stinging pain pulse from my left thigh, spreading to my lower back. I tried to turn myself onto my stomach but stopped all efforts as I felt my skin shred. I immediately knew I landed on some rogue mesh of our barbed wire, and it was partly stuck onto the ground. I tried to pull it out, but I just managed to prickle and cut my hands. 

Stuck sideways, I remained in the shell hole, painfully waiting for everything to end. It was not until the break of dawn that the shelling had died down. With the newfound light, our guns responded with a short bombardment on enemy lines. Then, an eerie silence hushed across the Somme. 

I looked at my hands and what I could of my uniform. My hands were pink as the blood had mixed with the chalk from the sap walls, and my sleeves were stained white and brown. I tried to look at my legs, but the wire cut deeper with each attempt to move. 

My attention then focused at the hurried and exhausted voices that started to populate our trenches. I had to be close to our frontline, for I could hear the steps of their boots, the rattling of boxes and equipment and the frantic shoveling.

“Someone! P-Please help!” – I cried out. No one answered. 

“Help! I’m stuck in the sap! Please! I need a medic!” – I yelled again. 

Again, I was left unanswered. After a few minutes I heard curious steps approaching. 

“Anyone there?” – I asked, my voice cracking. I was exhausted and extremely thirsty.

“Shite! We got another one here!” – A familiar voice called out. 

“Barlas? Is that you?”

The Scott soon peaked over the crater’s edge, his big blue eyes shining like beacons in the foggy air. 

“Shite Edwards, that’s quite the mess you got yourself in there…” – Barlas sorrowfully sighed. – “Bring me some rope and wire cutters!” – he then yelled.

“How bad is it?” – I groaned.

“You’re sitting on a wire mesh, lad…” – he confessed. “I’ll try and get you out. The crater is not that deep.”

After a few minutes’ wait, more men came. I heard one of them take off his webbing and tunic, telling the soldiers to wait for him near the shell hole and he carefully slid down. 

I yelped in pain as the metal twisted outwards under his weight. The man then placed his tunic over the mesh of wire and kneeled beside me, attempting to cut large pieces wire to free me out of its painful grasp. 

All I could do was grit my teeth and whine as he snipped away, the razors cutting me more as the wire untensed or was moved abruptly by him. He then ordered the men on top to lower the rope, carefully stood up and tried to lay his tunic under me as best as he could.

“We’re almost there, lad.” – he said as he handed me the rope. – “Brace yourself. This is not going to be pretty.”

Before I could ask anything, the unknown soldier gave the order to pull. I cried horrifically as I felt my skin tearing while being pulled upwards. They stopped upon hearing me and the he continued to cut and remove pieces of the wire. This painful process continued for quite a while before I was finally pulled out of that damned hole. 

“W-W-What’s your name?” – I asked out of breath as I was being picked up. 

“Private Alfred Blackburn, at your service, lad.” – he responded with a cheerful tune.

I looked around as I was carried away by Barlas and another bloke. I tried to get ahold of my bearings, but there was nothing left standing. Trenches were reduced to nothing but craters. Mud and chalk were now where grass once stood and trees were blown to splinters. The surrounding ruins were leveled to rubble. 

As I was dragged, I saw a weary lieutenant observing his men. He sported a trench coat and brown leather gloves and smoked from an ornated pipe. We locked eyes as I passed by him. Though he said nothing, his frown expressed great pity, yet the men hurrying up and down the trench carrying spades and amenities cheered me on as they went, telling me that I was lucky, for this was my ‘ticket home.’ 

They took me to the remains of a nearby communication trench, where they kindly placed me in a small, but empty dugout meant for munition storage until a stretcher bearer came to take me to the rear lines. 

I thanked the pair greatly for their efforts, and they soon rushed back to help fill the ranks in the front line.

Relieved by the fact that I was in a relative safe place and exhausted by the whole endeavor, I closed my eyes to catch a quick nap. In my darkness, I could hear the jangling equipment as our soldiers trotted back and forth the ruined communication trench. Officers led their men forwards to reinforce the shattered frontline, machinegun crews carried their heavy guns to settle down in new positions, others carried some of the wounded towards our rear lines. 

But not a minute after I shut my eyes, private Barlas woke me up, tapping my shoulder me rather delicately. 

“Ptss! Edwards!” – The Scott whispered in a soft and somber tone. – “I brought you some water.” 

I took the canteen right off his hands and gulped it all down with such desperation that some of the water spilled down my chin and cheeks. I gasped in relief after I emptied Barlas’ canteen. I intended to thank him afterwards, but his appearance shocked me greatly; I was left without words. 

He just sat beside me. He uttered no word. His eyes were sunken and dark, his whole face, expressionless, and his hands shook uncontrollably. He looked nor dead or alive, but instead broken and lost; just an empty shell resembling a man. 

I called him, and for a second, Barlas seemed to snap out of his trance. The Private faintly smiled as I handed him back his canteen. The chain linking the cap with the canteen rattled intensely as it shook in his hands. 

The rattling was unexpectedly drowned by the thunderous crackling of the distant German artillery batteries resuming their bombardment. Barlas’ fragile shell shattered as the first explosions rocked the line of craters that once were the frontline trench. He let out a horrified whimper as shells shrieked towards us. Seconds later they detonated, throwing long columns of dirt high into the air, and showering shrapnel and fire. 

The earlier bombardment, or any bombardment that I have braced before, remained unmatched by the pure ferocity of this barrage. There were so much explosions that it all sounded like a seemingly never-ending roar and the ground shook so as if it would split open into a never-ending chasm; it was truly the most intense cannonade I ever heard.

The terrified Scott was frozen in fear, eyes closed, and covering his ears. As I felt the bombardment creep towards us again, I pulled him to me and crammed his torso into the dugout. His head rested on my shoulder and his chest was on top of mine, but his legs were exposed.

Seconds later, the brunt of the shelling pounded our position. I braced for impact, closing my eyes, and holding tight to Barlas’ tunic. I yelled a prayer at the top of my as shells landed left and right and all around us, but such was the chaos engulfing us, that I could not even hear myself scream. And then, silence…

Badum… Badum… Badum… 

I awoke to a splitting headache and an irritating sensation burning me from the inside out. Immediately, I felt nauseated and my eyes were watery. A thick smoke with a peppery, pungent smell lingered about. 

I grew more and more desperate as I felt like the air was being snuffed away from my very lungs. Barlas was still on top of me. With great effort, I called out to Barlas. He remained silent and still. 

I had no choice but to push him off me. His body was eerily tense and the little skin that I grazed felt cold. After a clumsy struggle, I pushed the Scott aside.  
My suspicion was confirmed once I noticed he did not move a muscle and made the slightest of sounds. He must have taken some blow in his legs and bled to death. 

Coughing violently, I made the unpleasant attempt to leave in search of fresh air. I crawled for a couple of meters until I painfully propped myself up with a rifle I found by a gray corpse. Then I continued to slowly limp across the dangerous blown out maze many men called their grave. 

After traversing blindly, I eventually saw the blurry color pallet change from a blinding white to patches of gray, brown, yellow, red… the air felt different and it was much more pleasant to breath. Exhausted, I collapsed and remained where I fell for what felt like hours but were just mere seconds.

A pair of black jackboots were all that I could see before I was grabbed by both my arms and forcefully lifted. I closed my eyes as I thought at last my comrades had found me but was surprised when I was brutally shaken and saw not a fellow Brit, but a man clad in gray a gray uniform with a dozen grenades strapped under his belt and sporting a green steel helmet. In one hand he wielded a pistol and with the other he covered his face with a piece of tattered cloth. Though he did not remove the cloth off him, I could tell he was yelling by the way his chin bobbed up and down and his eyes partially squinted. 

Oddly enough, it was after studying his facial gestures that I realized that there was no sound. I heard no screaming, no gunshot, no explosion… my ears had stopped ringing. I looked around my capturers and noticed hundreds of German shock troops advancing up to our third line of trenches a hundred meters away. Bullets were flying everywhere like swarms of angry bees; planes strafed down like a hawk to its prey; our soldiers fought brutally against one another, some with spades and knives, others used their rifles as clubs. Such brutal chaos, yet it was peacefully silent. 

A moment passed and I was lowered down and laid against the parapet wall. One of the Germans that had previously hold me kneeled beside me and spared me some of his water. He carefully washed my eyes after I drank. 

Then, as suddenly as a blink of an eye, they climbed over the blown berm and vanished into the fog of war. I was left there to my own devices. As I struggled to maintain my consciousness, my thoughts began to wander. Abandoned in that lonesome trench I wept, for I entered this war a jubilant soldier eager to face the adventures of war, only to soon leave it a crippled and defeated, as a prisoner of war.

**Author's Note:**

> If any knowledgeable in ww1 history wishes to see a different perspective of the war, please feel free to suggest.


End file.
